Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s [LWN.net]

Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s

Posted Apr 15, 2009 3:53 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
In reply to: Solving the ext3 latency problem by mgb
Parent article: Solving the ext3 latency problem

The big company I'm working for actually has most of its interactive Linux users on multi-user servers: This is because everyone is "of course" supplied with a Windows PC, but Linux is preferred for software development for several products, so the developers access Linux servers with X11 emulator or VNC running on the PC. This also makes it easier to maintain a consistent development environment for the users. Some people do have Linux workstations, but these are a minority.

I don't know how typical this kind of use is, but I suspect it common in technology companies needing a Linux development environment for some users but not wanting or being able to go all the way to Linux desktops.

(Log in to post comments)

Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s

Posted Apr 15, 2009 16:05 UTC (Wed) by chema (subscriber, #32636) [Link]

Same here.

Our development environment is a mixture of Windows desktop PCs (running some development tools + "corporate" applications) and Linux servers (providing: ssh + X11 fwd + http + samba + ...).

It used to be HP-UX/Solaris <-> Windows but we happily migrated to linux a year ago.

Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s

Posted Apr 15, 2009 20:18 UTC (Wed) by PhracturedBlue (subscriber, #4193) [Link]

Yes, but are you using EXT3 as the filesystem on those machines? In many (most?) multi-user systems, you're likely to have a big fileserver serving files via NFS or equivalent to various servers. I don't know if your company is set up that way, but I'd think it would be common for large corporations with many users.

Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s

Posted Apr 15, 2009 20:29 UTC (Wed) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

We used NFS like that back around '95 or '97 but it's way too slow for general use these days although there are undoubtedly still specialized applications where it's useful.

So yes, we use ext3 for mail servers and web servers etc. All of which are multi-remote-user.

Multiuser quite important still: remote users on Windows PC:s

Posted Apr 16, 2009 4:29 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Yes, but are you using EXT3 as the filesystem on those machines? In many (most?) multi-user systems, you're likely to have a big fileserver serving files via NFS or equivalent to various servers.

Yes and no: The home directories of the users are normally mounted via NFS (the NFS servers are not always Linux: NetApps and and Solaris boxes are also used), but the Linux servers (usually RHEL) to which people log in use ext3. Because of the various local shared directories, multiuser issues in ext3 are still relevant.